Episode 85: The Conversation: 1/2 Cup of American History

The best selling video game of all time didn't come about by accident. There's an entire history that starts with playing cards and tattoos and corn cob pipes. The story crosses paths with the Ultrahand, Dennis the Menace, Thimble Theatre, Olive Oyl, Nintendo, Popeye, Fleischer Studios, William Randolph Hearst, Chester Illinois and Namco. 

We're looking at some of the wow moments from the last episode, and in discussing it we got a chance to connect Fannie Farmer, the 1896 Boston Cooking School Cookbook's definition of a Cup, Peavey, Junior League Cookbooks, Boone & Erickson Morning Show on WCCO Radio, the East Bank & West Bank at the University of MN, and of course St. Anthony Falls. 

What can a recipe tell us about American history? A lot more than what’s for dinner.In this episode of Tracing the Path, we follow the American recipe from handwritten collections and community cookbooks to corporate test kitchens, radio programs, recipe contests, and the cards tucked inside kitchen boxes. Along the way, we’ll discover how recipes helped sell bananas, why suffragists published cookbooks, how a pincushion promotion helped create Betty Crocker, how Tupperware transformed the American kitchen, and how a second-place cake at the Pillsbury Bake-Off turned an obscure baking pan into an American icon.Because a recipe doesn’t just tell you how to make something. Look closely enough, and it can tell you what Americans were buying, what technology they had, how companies marketed to them, how women were identified, and even what was happening in the country at the time.It turns out you can teach a surprising amount of American history with just 1/2 cup.

Today we're looking at some of the wow! moments from the Pepsi episode. Specifically we're going deeper on the Pepsi Refresh Superbowl campaign, Pepsi's Navy, the Marriott Loan and the time capsule that is a Pepsi Can Collection. 

The Cold War wasn't fought only with missiles.It was also fought with supermarkets, television cameras, vodka, and a simple paper cup filled with Pepsi.This month, Tracing The Path follows the surprising chain of events that led an American soft drink behind the Iron Curtain—and a Russian vodka into American liquor stores.Along the way you'll discover the forgotten friendship between Russia and the United States, the invention of videotape by Ampex, the famous Kitchen Debate between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, and the remarkable business deal that briefly made Pepsi the owner of the world's seventh-largest navy.It's the story of how commerce, technology, and ordinary consumer products accomplished what politics often could not.And why, decades later, Vladimir Putin chose to reverse nearly all of it.

No matter what hero story you read or hear, the location it takes place will be in total alignment with the era it was written. And it has changed over time because society always pushes the hero to face the unknown at the edge of the map. In today's episode we cross paths with Homer, Daniel LaRusso, John Steinbeck, Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Lucas, HG Wells, Joseph Campbell, Shrek and Galileo. 

Today's episode is Part 3 of our Origin Story Series about the start of Tracing The Path. Today's story touches on Russia's Yuri Andropov, Mark Twain, Bram Stoker, Nicolae Ceaușescu the Austro Hungarian Empire, the University of Nebraska, Auschwitz, the Sound of Music and the concept of manifestation. 

In today's episode we discussion the evolution of grocery stores, as discussed in Episode 78. Life in Romania, automatic sliding doors, Walgreens lighting, Rachel's dads inventions and the plight of A&P. 

When Boris Yeltsin came to the United States in 1989 to speak, visit with the President and see the Statue of Liberty, his entire outlook on the world changed in one :20 minute moment. But it wasn't NYC or Miami or President Bush. It was Randall's Grocery Store in Webster Texas.  This is the story of the history of that moment. In this episode we cross paths with Marjorie Merriwether Post, IBM, Spectra-Physics, Wrigley's Gum, James J. Hill, Clarence Saudners, Williams Leslie Maxson, Boris Yeltsin and Grape Nuts. 

Are those really the world's most famous tunes? Rachel and I discuss the "easter eggs" of the show, whether they are songs and more ludicrousness.  Foreigner, Twinkle Twinkle, Happy Birthday . . . what do you think?